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Bill Haley and His Comets
Bill Haley and His Comets were a first-generation American rock and roll band established as the country and western group Bill Haley and the Saddlemen in c.1949. In the fall of 1952, the group was renamed the Comets. Led by former disk jockey and champion yodeller Bill Haley (1925-1981), the group began recording music in the style known as rock and roll (originally defined as the combination of country and western with rhythm and blues) in 1950-51 with country-fied versions of R&B songs like Ruth Brown's "Teardrops from My Eyes" and Jackie Brentson's "Rocket 88", and is credited with introducing rock and roll music to mainstream audiences by way of early, pre-Elvis hits such as "Crazy Man, Crazy" (co-written by Haley, 1953), "Shake Rattle and Roll" (1954) and their best-known hit, "Rock Around the Clock" (also 1954, but not a hit until 1955). The Comets continued to release hit records in the U.S. until "Skokiaan" in 1960, after which the group continued to record major hit records in Mexico and Europe for the rest of the decade, most notably "Florida Twist" (1961) which became a standard in Mexico. In 1973, George Lucas used the group's 1954 Decca Records (later MCA) recording of "Rock Around the Clock" for the opening theme of his film, American Graffiti, starring Ron Howard. The success of the film inspired the commissioning of Happy Days as a series. One element borrowed from the Lucas film was the use of "Rock Around the Clock" as the opening theme music for the first two seasons of Happy Days. Rather than use the 1954 recording, Bill Haley and His Comets - still popular performers as a result of the Rock and Roll Revival trend that began in the late 1960s - were commissioned to re-record the song, along with several others (including "See You Later, Alligator") that would be heard playing in the background of various early episodes. None of these original studio masters have, to date, been released commercially, though an off-air recording of the 1973 version of "Rock Around the Clock", with sound effects from the opening credits, did appear on a German compilation album in 2003. The syndicated version of the series, Happy Days Again, uses a poorly edited version of the 1954 recording in place of the remake. As a result of its use in both American Graffiti and Happy Days, Haley's 1954 recording of "Rock Around the Clock" re-entered both the US and UK Top 40 charts in the spring of 1974. Haley continued to be associated with Happy Days for the rest of his career and was reported to have attended an event related to the show in the late 1970s at a time when he was otherwise in semi-retirement. After Haley came out of retirement in 1979, Bill Haley and His Comets continued to perform until the spring of 1980; Haley died in February 1981. Since then numerous groups have performed under the Bill Haley's Comets name, including one contingent that features musicians from the original 1954 recording session, the surviving members of which continue to perform as of 2017. Category: Musicians